Kim, Forrester Head to NCAA Championships

NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The swim season may be
over for most of the women’s swimming and diving team, but
senior Susan Kim and freshman Alex Forrester have one more meet
left, as they represent the Bulldogs at the NCAA Championships this
weekend. The meet will take place Mar. 18-20 at
Purdue’s Boilermaker Aquatics Center in West Lafayette, Ind.

Neither Kim nor Forrester will compete on Thursday, but will
begin with preliminaries Friday morning in the 100-yard
breaststroke and 100-yard butterfly, respectively. The finals
in those events will then be held Friday night. On Saturday,
Kim will compete in the 200-yard breaststroke and Forrester will
compete in the 200-yard butterfly.

Both Kim and Forrester have been seeded high in their
events. In the 100-yard breaststroke, Kim qualified
19th with her NCAA B cut time of 1:00.66. The top
time in the country was Ashley Danner of George Mason with a time
of 59.06. Kim qualified with the seventh fastest time in the
200-yard breaststroke. Her NCAA A cut time of 2:09.37 is 1.72
seconds off the lead time of 2:07.65. That time was swum by
Elizabeth Smith of Stanford.

Forrester qualified with the 12th fastest time in the
100-yard butterfly. She swam an NCAA B cut time of
52.58, just over a second off the fastest. Elaine Breeden of
Stanford qualified with the fastest time of 51.24. In the
200-yard butterfly, Forrester qualified with the 11th
fastest time. She again swam an NCAA B cut of 1:55.78.
The fastest qualifier was Katinka Hosszu of Southern California at
1:52.71.

Kim and Forrester both dominated the Ivy League Championships on
Feb. 25-27. Kim had what will surely go down as the best meet
of her career. She was honored with the most prestigious
award of the meet, Swimmer of the Meet, as well as three first-team
and one second-team All-Ivy selections. On Thursday of the
meet, she took third in the 400-yard IM and helped Yale to a
second-place finish in the 400-yard medley relay. She started
off Friday with a team win in the 200-yard medley relay. She
then broke the pool, meet, and Ivy records en route to a dominating
win in the 100-yard breaststroke. Then, in her best
performance of the meet, Kim won the 200-yard breaststroke by more
than five seconds. She broke the meet, pool, and Ivy records,
as well as earned the first NCAA A cut of her career.

Forrester dominated the meet with three individual wins, three
relay wins, and one relay second place. She earned six
first-team All-Ivy selections and one second-team selection.
In the 50-yard freestyle, Forrester earned an NCAA B cut with her
preliminary time of 22.71. In the 100-butterfly, she broke
the meet record which had held since 1997 with her time of
53.03. She also earned an NCAA B cut with her victory.
In her third individual victory, the 200-yard butterfly, she broke
the meet record and earned an NCAA B cut with her time of 1:55.78.